"Do you know that I could kill you?" he asked, glaring at Gordon like a tiger. Gordon answered that he was quite ready to die, and that in killing him the King would only confer a favour on him, opening a door he must not open for himself.
"Then my power has no terrors for you?" said the King.
"None whatever," replied Gordon, and the King, who was used to rule by terror, had no more to say.
This mission over, Gordon, utterly worn out, and broken in health, returned to Egypt, and resigned his post as Governor-General of the Soudan.
The slaves that he had set free used to try to kiss his feet and the hem of his garment. To this day there is a name known in Egypt and in the Soudan as that of a man who scorned money, who had no fear of any man, who did not even fear death, whose mercy was as perfect as his uprightness. And the name of that man is Gordon Pasha.
"Give us another Governor like Gordon Pasha," was the cry of the Soudanese when the Mahdi uprose to be a scourge to the Soudan.
CHAPTER VI
KHARTOUM
Gordon left Egypt in December 1879, "not a day too soon," the doctor said, for he was ill, not only from hard work, but from overwork.